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Feed me not‘ is an exhibition, that brings together a diverse group of artists and designers questioning the relationship to materials, information and emotions that we are confronted with beyond our personal choice. By processing these both subjectively and critically, they offer us alternative ways of approaching our lives and experiences. In order to do so, the selected artists conscientiously transform various discarded materials, such as e-waste, bulky waste or collected flip-flops into sublime works of art. Through their narratives, they reflect on how the decisions of today’s society reflect on our futures. Wether in performance, photography or abstract tapestries, the show serves as a visual reflection on the overproduction of plastic, global supply chains and planetary responsibility.
At the same time the exhibition also holds space for the documentary of a communitarian projects that fashion designer Heinemann has recently set up in Ghana with Kwabena Obiri Yeboah and Martin Wöllenstein: The Nnoboa Space is an innovative program for young art and design professionals from the Sekondi–Takoradi Area and offers comprehensive training led by local and international fashion design and film/photography experts.
Premiering a new suite of paintings, How to be invisible brings together a significant body of work that foregrounds the relationship between visibility and invisibility. Taking a song by singer-songwriter Kate Bush as a point of departure, Jabłońska’s paintings delve into the complex desire for invisibility, a sentiment often born from challenging personal circumstances or significant political events. The exhibition explores both the longing to disappear from view and the countering desire to be seen and recognized, a dilemma of particular poignancy for an artist. Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of literary and art historical sources, among them books by the writers Lidia Yuknavitch and Deborah Levy and the lives and work of pioneering female artists such as Maria Lassnig, Jabłońska firmly roots the new paintings in the particularities of female experience, even if her personal observations resonate with much wider significance for society at large.
In seeking to explore how these two opposing sentiments manifest, the artist populates her large-scale canvases with motifs that play on the tension between visibility and invisibility. The new works feature Karolina Jabłońska’s recurring protagonist - a generalized self-portrait with identifiable features, captivating facial expression, expressive eyes, and prominent bushy eyebrows. In these paintings, the figure is depicted in various scenes of daily life, moving between interior domestic spaces and outdoor landscapes. At the core of each composition is the notion of concealment—whether it‘s hiding beneath a cascade of leaves, finding refuge in the confines of a wardrobe, or donning neutral-colored clothes to seamlessly merge into a crowd. In Jabłońska’s images, clothing, objects, and natural elements become tools to shield from being seen. Paradoxically, by attempting to hide, the figure’s presence only becomes more pronounced.
A number of new works depicting domestic settings, among them Red Preserves and Fridge, continue to explore a central theme in the artist’s practice, namely the traditional role assigned to women. Red Preserves, for example, which presents a severed head apparently stored in a jar alongside other pickled fruits and vegetables, suggests an allegory for the entrapment of women, and by implication the existential threat to their bodies and restrictions imposed by political realities. Yet, whilst the work addresses the confinement of women within the domestic sphere, it also draws attention to the ways food can serve as a source of comfort. Inscribing multiple layers of meaning, Jabłońska unveils the complexities of navigating female experience.
Having been an important recurring motif since the start of her practice, Jabłońska’s self-portrait acts as a tool to explore multiple identities and emotional states. Her presentation of figures braving dreary weather conditions set in the Polish countryside, such as Head in the Grass and Misty Woods, suggest analogies between weather conditions and mental and physical states. Appearing as desolate landscapes, in turn drenched, muddy or icy, her forest scenes emerge as sites for exploring personal feelings, all the while fully aware of the deceptive straightforwardness of such analogy —and wittily embracing the long history of employing landscape motifs as atmospheric markers.
Jabłońska’s compositions often suggest strong emotions that evoke a visceral response in the viewer. We feel the freezing cold, even if her pictorial alter ego, hiding in a fridge or with her head in the wet grass, appears not to mind. Everyday situations—such as putting on a pair of tights or taking a stroll in the outdoors—take on a suggestive power in their monumental size. By pairing dramatically distorted points of view and expressive color, Jabłońska skillfully manipulates her medium to forge fictional narratives that explore the interiority of women, their desires, and ideas concerning sociability.
“Auf Gedeih und Verderb” (for better or worse) brings together more than 30paintings by Raphaël-Bachir Osman (b. 1992, France) and Franck Rausch (b. 1990,France). Having studied alongside each other in Berlin, the artists present their workin pairs, and thus draw our attention to parallels in their practices that recur in bothsubject and style. Osman and Rausch use painting as a lens to examine their dailysurroundings, be it neighborhood scenes or seemingly arbitrary objects in theirhomes or studios. Experimenting with different modes of texture, Osman elevatessteaming potatoes or sausages to the protagonists of his delicate oil paintings, whileRausch creates the atmospheric depth of his characters and still lives with thick andrough layers of color.“Auf Gedeih und Verderb” juxtaposes the work of two friends. It reveals theirrelationship to each other as well as to painting itself. Moving between reality andfantasy, much of their work has a certain humor in common through which theyconvey both the good and the bad of being artists and friends who haveaccompanied each other over the years. Fragments of their conversations becomevisible on canvas, like an occasional detour into historical references, a gherkin here,an allusion to Manet’s lemon there. As the title suggests, “Auf Gedeih und Verderb”confronts us with companionship and an unconditional love of painting, beingsimultaneously devoted to it and at its mercy. The exhibition at Gr_und is the first duoshow of Osman and Rausch in Berlin and will be on view from 10 February until 1March 2024.
The new day begins in the middle of the night. When we wake up in the morning, there is this brief moment in which memory still seems absent and only the feeling of expectation is present. It is fleeting and, in case of doubt, will never be fulfilled - yet this one-sided promise of a truth that has not yet arrived forms an essential cornerstone of human resilience.Important philosophers have tried to establish applicable rules for promises. Immanuel Kant argued that promises should always be kept, while some consequentialists argue that promises should always be broken when doing so would bring benefits. In contrast to Kant, some Rossians hold that morality cannot be fixed in terms of right and wrong. In certain circumstances, it may be more advantageous to break a promise than to keep it.This exhibition moves along these moral principles, while the works on display express, promise or break promises for a better present than the current one in various ways.The examination of Viktor Petrov's installations suggests foggy, associative fragments of memory. Aline Schwörer's sculptures deal with the exploitation of the biosphere, the 'body of the earth' and its living creatures. Through the interplay of man and machine, technology and emotions, Raphaël Fischer-Dieskau's work evokes a visceral reaction in the viewer as a multi-sensory experience. Sofiia Yesakova's drawings depict rupture and the pain associated with loss. Polina Shcherbyna's artistic practice is on the one hand filled with horror and powerlessness in the face of the dark side of humanity, but at the same time it also manifests a confidence in the future. Kim Bode's artistic endeavors and radical practice deal with the complicated web of precarious living conditions and the multi-layered perspectives of social struggles in threatened and endangered environments. PY Koller explores possible future scenarios that future generations will face. Göksu Baysal examines various facets of human existence.The interplay arises through an interdisciplinary engagement with the material he collects during travels and research. In his expansive installations, these materials are brought together in ephemeral and narrative constellations.
Göksu Baysal, Kim Bode, Raphaël Fischer-Dieskau, PY Koller, Viktor Petrov, Aline Schwörer, Polina Shcherbyna, Sofiia Yesakova • curated by Nicola E. Petek
In the form of a hybrid, performative live award ceremony of the ECHO 2050 for New Music and mockumentary film flashbacks, these questions collide with the highly exciting and highly problematic world of art increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Does humanoid art even have a future? Under the direction of Martin Miotk and the artistic direction of Evan Gardner, the specialists in garishly colored grotesque bring these two thematic complexes together in their usual refreshing way by creating the fluid artificial character AI Ursula* - alternately embodied by Gina May Walter (soprano) and Nina Schopka (acting).
The logical stringency of this link reveals itself in the course of a colorful evening of chaos, camp and music and concerns us all as human beings: What happens to the old, forgotten and people suffering from dementia as a former (unrecognized) source of strength in society (and in art)? It's about growing old. Having worked all your life for something that no longer has any meaning in a new era.
The live soundtrack composed by Evan Gardner oscillates between a sprawling orchestral language realized through synthesizers and electronic music based on classical scores, and its ECHO through the piano playing of Alba Gentili-Tedeschi and the singing of Gina May Walter as a reminder of a future in which there are no more people creating art. Born from music, AI Ursula* manifests in her place - an interpretation of herself.
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